Podcast transcript

Welcome to the second pod-cast in the Companies Act 2006 series, which will outline the customer consultation process currently taking place.

The majority of the changes and regulations outlined in the 2006 Act are not due to be implemented until October 2008.  In the meantime, Companies House is keen to engage closely with its customers on the introduction of new processes, via two consultation documents, that were published by Companies House and made available on this website on the 20th July.

The first document, entitled “Working with Companies House”, covers Registrar’s Rules.  These are new powers granted under the 2006 Act to enable the Registrar to determine processes previously defined by the Secretary of State.

The document asks customers some fundamental questions relating to their day to day dealings with Companies House, including:

• The form and manner of the delivery of company information;
• Electronic communication, and how documents should be sent;
• The descriptions, titles and layouts of paper documents;

The responses received from customers will be considered when formulating the framework for the Registrar’s Rules, and once defined, the new rules will be accessible to all users.

The second document consults on the civil penalties associated with the late filing of accounts.

The Late Filing Penalty regime was introduced in 1992, as a way of increasing the number of companies filing accounts within the required timeframe.

The consultation document proposes to introduce a new regime to further encourage companies to file accounts on time.  This includes:

• Increasing current penalties to take account of inflation since their introduction in 1992;
• A proposed ‘repeat offender’ supplement for companies who continually file their accounts late;
• And a faster rate of increase in the scale of penalties, subject to how late the accounts are filed.

If you feel you can make a contribution to either consultation, we encourage you to express your views.  Both consultation documents are available under the publications section of the Companies Act pages of this website.

The consultation process for each will end on the 12th October 2007.

Thank you for listening.